WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, secretly worked for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago and proposed an ambitious political strategy to undermine anti-Russian opposition across former Soviet republics, The Associated Press has learned. The work appears to contradict assertions by the Trump administration and Manafort himself that he never worked for Russian interests.

Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and the former Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse.

That's, um. Well. Pretty much the sort of thing that sounds like proposing to have operatives fiddle with elections through massaging news coverage. If only we could connect him to the Trump Campa...

UPDATE: And this presser by Rep. Nunes only seems to reiterate that the Trump campaign wasn't directly wiretapped, but that they seemed to be in contact an awful lot with people who (quite lawfully) were under surveillance. Great try though!

UPDATE 2: I wonder if what Rep. Nunes is talking about was classified? And why he has to run'long and brief POTUS on it right sharpish. Not at all like you'd think an investigation would work, right?